the flaming sword of the BITTER: FAQ Archives

January 20, 2005

It's time.

I have labored long enough.

Suffered long enough.

Bled enough.

Cried enough.

Been pierced by the pain and the agony of the jagged steel enough.

I grow older, and things change.

For sixteen and a half years, this is how I have found my voice. Expressed the pain of a betrayal so large that it shattered a life, forwards and backwards through time.

But now… now, it is time to set it aside.

To let others take up the charge.

To let others boil their blood.

To let others rage into the night.

Today, Strange, my son, turns 20.

And to him, the Scion of the BITTER, and his generation, I bequeath this holy place.

To my stalwart colleagues, the two other stanchions of the triumvirate of disciples, it has been a privilege sharing the pulpit with you.

But as for me… it is time to remove the mantle. It is simply no longer my place to be the Vanguard Disciple. My path now lies elsewhere.

Power, faith, and rage, my brothers and sisters. The BITTER is always and forever, and it shall thusly be yours, so long as you submit to it, embrace it, understand it, and let it flow in, of, around, and through you.

The only thing left to say?

Goodbye.

So quoth scott at 08:00 UTC | 1 BITTER pill | TrackBack

December 22, 2004

The longest dark night

The BITTER would like to cheerfully remind you that there is the most night to be had today.

Perhaps it is a good time for you to reflect on the BITTER.

Because, rest assured, with all this extra time, the BITTER is most certainly reflecting on you.

So quoth scott at 02:40 UTC | 0 BITTER pills | TrackBack

April 14, 2003

raise your hand if you are a cuddle bitch

Necessary reading: Ladder Theory

So quoth tony at 22:43 UTC | 5 BITTER pills | TrackBack

January 22, 2003

Bukimi

"Sometimes...

You can cry until there is nothing wet in you.

You can scream and curse until your throat rebels and ruptures.

You can pray, all you want, to whatever god you think will listen.

And, still, it makes no difference.

It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you.

And you know that if it ever did relent... It would not be because it cared.

_______________________________________
-written in blood before everything went black"
-JTHM, Director's cut.

You know, it has occurred to me just now, as I read that, that it is the voice of a BITTER disciple writing with words about a power equally as great as the BITTER, but that they are not words that were spun of the BITTER. These words are spun with something that makes me shiver, something that makes me afraid for one of the first times since I was a child. It is a power that I have seen only in my worst night-terrors, something that had a very firm grip on me in my early childhood years (maybe even still, maybe it has us all by the nape of the neck and we just don't know it). It is the same power that we fear will follow us back through, into the waking world, from a horrible night-terror. Occasionally for me, it/he did, in the form of feverish delusions and hallucinations, millions of tiny, silvery, translucent spiders crawling all over myself and my room like a silken cloth and a cruel daemon seeping through the wall crying out my name as if to beckon me closer.

At times, one might think the BITTER to be harsh and evil, but it is only so in a way that a mother is to her child, scorning and bringing momentary pain, emotional or physical, because it will help the child grow into something beautiful, later in life. This thing is something that I cannot make a comparison to (though if you ask any Christian what I am talking about, they will tell you, "The Devil"; this would stand in front of the Devil and call him a pussy, and the Devil would take it and walk away with his tail between his legs). It might be able to be labeled as an abusive father, only concerned with his own image and grinding his children into sniveling dust because they make him look bad, then damning them and beating them (both physically and emotionally), but that does not go far enough. This thing has been behind several dark ages in history, I am sure: the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, the United States government's slaughter of Indians in the 1800's, and I am sure it was just peeking its head in with the Salem Witch trials. Pain is not this thing's tool of teaching (if it gives a damn about teaching at all). Its poison is that of fear, utterly mind-numbing and irrational. The kind of fear that the body dies from in an effort to free itself from its grasp. The kind of fear that makes a full grown man lose control over his bowels and bladder as he stands in its presence. The kind of fear that makes a child want to scream and cry in the dark after waking from a horrible night-terror but holds it in because they are afraid that whatever had crafted this dream has followed them through, and if they make a sound, it will leap onto them and tear them apart. It pales the descriptions of any god that has ever existed in mythology and, akin to the BITTER, even gods are subject to its wrath.

The BITTER is not seen by everyone; however, this thing IS. IT forces them to look at it, IT makes them afraid, IT makes them tremble. Yet this thing is almost like a counterpart to the BITTER, it is like the Husband in this twisted marriage. And like the majority of marriages, it is for show, and once the doors in the bedroom close we can hear their screams issue out from within the chamber. Those who only know the thing only hear ITS terrible bellow, and they hide under the covers of the bed, afraid that if they lift them that the monsters will get them. Those of us who know BOTH our Mother, the BITTER, and her Husband (for he is not our Father; we are bastard children. He is the fairy-tale evil of a step-parent) can hear both of their cries, and we are pained and afraid as we wish to strike out at this thing which utters such horrid shrikes at our Mother.

I don't want to find a name for this thing. I don't want to believe in its existence, because to give it a name is to accept it as part of one's life. To leave it nameless and fear it is to give it power over us. So too, to give it a name is to take power over it, to make it breakable. One such thing has once shown itself, in a Marvel comic book no less; his name was Sinister, and so shall its name be. SINISTER, I name thee, and I challenge thee, as an Acolyte of the BITTER, as her bastard child, I will take hold of your grasp and throw it off, and when I do, I will put my own hands against you.

-Strange, Acolyte to the BITTER

So quoth Strange at 08:28 UTC | 4 BITTER pills | TrackBack

January 17, 2003

How Strange the taste of BITTER

The BITTER is warm, it is salvation, it is freedom.

The BITTER stands when all else has left you, when everything is gone but you, when exile is close at hand

The BITTER waits with open arms to welcome you into it upon your death, upon your destruction, upon your weakness leaving

The BITTER holds the keys to every door, to every answer, to every insight

The BITTER stares into the eyes of every person, it screams in their ears, it slaps at their faces

The BITTER trembles in powerful rage at the ignorance of "Beautiful People", of Wall Street journalists, of empty headed teens

The BITTER is teenage angst, is the daemon inside you, is a half formed thought in your mind

The BITTER hides in the silence of a baby's scream, in the heart of every half assed lover, in the darkness at the foot of your bed

The BITTER is the glowing ember within every emotion, within every painful moment, within every epiphany

The BITTER is what will rip you down till you are nothing but pure, rip your illusions down till you see nothing but the BITTER, rip you until you are raw power and then it is the BITTER that will build you back up.

- Strange, acolyte of the BITTER

So quoth scott at 04:48 UTC | 1 BITTER pill | TrackBack

December 3, 2002

Just a reminder

If you don't have a date for New Year's, the BITTER always has room in its schedule.

So quoth tony at 20:57 UTC | 1 BITTER pill | TrackBack

September 15, 2002

BITTER through the ages: 1970s TV

Suicide is Painless

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see ...

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

I try to find a way to make
all our little joys relate
without that ever-present hate
but now I know that it's too late, and ...